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Every Tuesday the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), which is the governmental body that oversees the Futures markets, gathers data on open interest in each separate futures market from the exchange on which that market is listed. The open interest is first sorted into two categories: reportable positions and non-reportable positions.
Antecedents of the Commitments of Traders (COT) reports can be traced all the way back to 1924. In that year, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Grain Futures Administration (predecessor to the USDA Commodity Exchange Authority, in turn the predecessor to the CFTC), published its first comprehensive annual report of hedging and speculation in regulated futures markets.
This sample is a page from the December 12, 2006, Commitments of Traders report (short format) showing data for the Chicago Board of Trade's wheat futures contract.
You may or may not have heard about the Commitments of Traders report, it has been around for many, many years. We have constructed a format that will assist you in making trading decisions by using extremes.
Definitions of Commitments of Traders Terms
Major Markets for Which the COT Data Is Shown by Crop Year